Nickoli Roussakov was brought up in Halifax, so when he had established his own web content company, it was imperative he return to where it all started.

Roussakov owns Content Bloom, a niche web content management agency that enables large businesses to have multi-national, multi-language and multi-brand websites under one umbrella.

“Every department wants content on the web and they want to do it in 60 languages under the same brand or in the same manner,” said Roussakov. “We specialize in SDL Tridion, a web content management system that has made us one of the top firms on the globe with this.”

His parents brought him to Halifax when he was in Grade 5, and Roussakov graduated university before settling down with his wife in Toronto. But it didn’t feel like home. “My wife and I looked at each other one day, and we wanted to be home near our families. We moved back to Halifax that same weekend in 2011.”

He said Metro provides a great place for an IT startup to grow and actualize dreams. “There’s a lot of great talent here in Halifax. Several universities offer computer science programs, so we can get great graduates,” he said. “We work as a team and get people in who understand what that’s like and want to be a part of it.”

He says the time-zone in Halifax is perfect because it’s right between Pacific and GMT. “It lets us serve a really wide variety of clients, from Europe to L.A. We don’t have to work super-weird hours,” he said. “We have an international airport and high-speed Internet. That’s all we really need.”

However, the building they chose, right off the Bedford Highway, took some work. The 1,800-square-foot space was previously an engineering firm and was too compartmentalized for Roussakov’s taste. “They had a lot of small, private offices. We prefer open concept. We tore down the walls and just kept conference rooms and call rooms,” he said. “The rest of the office is open. There are no cubicles or walls. There are always some great conversations going on and, when everyone is in the zone, you can hear things humming along like electric lines in the winter.”

Content Bloom occupies one floor in a larger building. They began with half the floor, but within 16 months they also needed the other half. “There are between 15 and 20 of us, and we’re against cubicle farms. It doesn’t work for our culture. We have modest, small desks, with just enough space for a few monitors, laptops and plugs,” he said.

There are little islands of six desks each, so people working for one client or project can shift around and work together. At Content Bloom, people don’t feel chained to a desk. “We have laptops and are free to move around. There’s a stand-up bar by the window, and that’s prime real estate,” he said. “There are other, bigger desks by the window and a cozy space with a beanbag chair.”

Though they deal in online platforms, cyber security wasn’t too big a threat for them. “The space wasn’t all rigged with key cards and security, and we never invested there. The assets in the office aren’t significant,” he said. “The data is secure in the cloud, and laptops go home with us at the end of the day.”

Content Bloom takes on big jobs, but it also knows how to have fun. The office comes equipped with a lounge room, furnished with a couch, chair, bookshelf, guitar, ukulele, 50-inch TV and an Xbox. “We also knocked down a wall but had to keep a supporting pillar with a doorway. We put a chin-up bar there. You need to keep your guns in shape,” he said with a laugh. They have a basketball net outside, and in the summer the team races remote control cars. “We like to have fun. You have to have fun
if you’re going to work hard,” he said.

Ogrimmar Inc.

Hai Hu, CEO and co-founder of Ogrimmar Inc., runs the tech start-up that helps mid-sized, high-growth companies “convert their data into insights and action by rapidly building custom workflow apps and dashboards that connect data, systems and people.”

Hu co-founded with Dr. Changhai Jiang, and both are permanent residents and immigrants from China on the Start-Up Visa Program. They have eight employees in Halifax and Beijing. “We have the Beijing office handling all business in China and Asia. We also briefly stayed in the Silicon Valley in 2015 during our program with Alchemist Accelerator,” said Hu. “The Halifax office was founded in April 2016, originally at IET Centre on Summer Street provided by Innovacorp. Now we are a Volta Labs resident company and based on the 7th floor at 1505 Barrington Street, in the Bell Aliant building.”

He calls Halifax a place with great benefits for a tech start-up. “We have a big pool of young grads in engineering and technology with a notably lower salary base as well as renting costs, which helps the company to run lean and grow fast,” he wrote. “The local and federal government, as well as local agencies like Volta Labs, Innovacorp and NSBI (Nova Scotia Business Inc.) are offering many supporting programs to startups to help them bootstrap through the early stages, which we found greatly helpful and founder friendly.” He also said Halifax is a gateway to the North American market. “Ontario and the East Coast U.S. are close enough to build business ties and share many similar business cultures.”

Ogrimmar’s focus is on a cozy, open office space so it can concentrate on product development. “Volta Labs did a great job renovating the old Bell boardroom office into a great space for tech startups,” Hu said. “They are perfectly-sized offices, with cozy and spacious common areas and have a nice and clean kitchen, as well as all the IT infrastructure which is crucial to us. We will need a spacious common area to share ideas and knowledge with other resident companies. Also, we would like to have easy access for our visitors for business. We do not have cubicles, which is great for startups, because team members constantly need to communicate and cooperate with each other all the time.”

Athletigen

Jeremy Koenig, CEO of Athletigen, says the company works in ‘proprietary human performance insights and genetic analytics.’

“In 2016, Athletigen launched Iris, the first of its kind, a personalized performance genomics app suite that merges an athlete’s genetic predispositions with daily monitoring data, empowering coaches and athletes with actionable insights,” he said. “The evolution of our product is driven by intense user research conducted with world-class, Olympic and Paralympic athletes. Through genomic innovation with strategic partners, Athletigen works to deliver the most advanced research findings in human performance to its customers.”

The company started in 2014 and is headquartered in Halifax. It has satellite offices in Toronto and Vancouver, as well as remote employees throughout North America.
“I was working in Halifax at the time and met a number of important people here who helped push me to get Athletigen off the ground,” he said. “Given the connections I made and the access to talent, it made sense to keep the company in Halifax.”

Like the other two companies featured, he said the young talent was a great reason to stay. “The support for startups in Halifax from private and government organizations is really empowering and has allowed us to surpass more than 30 full-time employees just recently. There are also a number of very experienced advisors and mentors I have been able to connect my team to,” he said.

They are currently located on the 12th floor of the Maritime Centre, in an open office space. “Given the different teams we have, including engineering, science, sales, marketing and administration, we have a great space to work from,” he said. “The office was a blank slate that required no construction to accommodate us in our current state. We did paint over the stale colours and put up whiteboard walls across most of the office. We needed a functional space that could make any area of the office a meeting space to brainstorm or work through problems.”

They are exploring potential areas for a new space, but are currently enjoying downtown. “We are a startup with limited resources, so finding the right office space for what we need is important to be reasonably priced,” he said. “With the majority of our clients operating all over the world, there is not a direct need to be located in downtown Halifax, but we have not decided on a new office location as of yet.”

The office is laid out in a ‘C’ shape, with the entrance in the middle. “There is plenty of natural light through the many windows. We have views across the harbour to Dartmouth, both directions of Barrington Street and even looking up Spring Garden Road,” he said. “Given the nature of our work, it needs to be a collaborative space but also have areas for heads down, focused working. That balance has been the biggest challenge for this space as it is relatively open and can be distracting at times. Overall, the team has figured out ways to ensure productivity and creativity aren’t disrupting the times of focused work.” There are no cubicles, and they use long tables, with many people sitting close together. Their services are hosted in the cloud. “We have no physical stack on the premises, so our main cyber security priority was locking down our internal network.”

He said a cornerstone of being a startup is having office perks. “Of course we have a ping-pong table. It’s actually used quite often as a great way to wind down after intense meetings or coding sessions,” he said. “We also have our wall of honour, which is just different pictures of all our accomplishments and events over the first few years of the company.”

Overall, they are happy to be in Halifax. “Our current office setup works well for us and it’s been the home for a lot of important milestones for the company. The large, open space makes it easy for the team to come together and celebrate, keeping the team as tight knit as ever,” he said. “The base serves its purpose and provides the team the opportunities to work and solve some very complex problems. Overall, this space is built by the people who occupy it, so the team we have put together is what makes this space so great.”